


Now Comes the Night

by annabeth



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, Sexual Content, Sibling Incest, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 05:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11155548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeth/pseuds/annabeth
Summary: Edward was so pleased with the perfection of his creation that his eyes and mind were completely closed to any other possibility.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was bunnied by a song on my new Rob Thomas CD, so this was written with that song on repeat. Title shamelessly stolen from the song.
> 
> Written circa 2007.

The first few weeks following Al’s transmutation seemed idyllic. Al was perfectly formed, beautiful, luminous. He found joy in everything he did, from stretching luxuriantly into the feel of sheets against his bare skin, to washing the dishes that Edward disdained doing. His hair seemed to shine even in the dark, and his eyes seemed, to Edward, like the most open, honest eyes in the world. Edward was so pleased with the perfection of his creation that his eyes and mind were completely closed to any other possibility.

There was, for Edward, no warning of what was to come. It had been exactly three weeks and four days since he had recalled Al’s body from the Gate, moulding it and shaping it into something he thought, privately, that any god would be envious of. They were just finishing up their dinner, and Al was wiping his lips with his napkin, looking at Edward in a way that would have disturbed him, had he been able to see beyond the stars in his own eyes.

“Brother,” Al said, and pushed his long sleeves up over his forearms. “Let’s cuddle on the couch again.”

Cuddling up against Edward was Al’s favourite pastime, now that he had flesh again to feel, and breath with which to speak. Edward smiled fondly at his younger brother, and tossed his own napkin vaguely in the direction of the table. It fluttered to the floor, but neither of them noticed. Edward was positioning himself on the couch, and Al was scrambling up over his hips and chest and pressing his warm cheek to Edward’s, eyes slitted, breath slowly whispering against Edward’s jaw. He wrapped bony bare arms around Edward’s neck and curled his legs up between Edward’s, and a soft complacent silence folded around them.

“Al,” Edward said, in a voice that seemed sharp and very, very loud in the languorous quiet. “I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve always had some goal, some distant destination in mind. But you’re whole again, in the body you never should have left, and I find myself driftless.”

“It’s called being at peace, brother,” Al said, and his lips formed warm circles and angles against Edward’s neck. He snuggled even closer, his eyes shut, blind to the glow in Edward’s face.

“I love you, Al,” Edward whispered finally into the stillness. Every breath Al took pressed their chests together, and their hearts beat together, a steady rhythm in the slight dark of dusk. He closed his own eyes, unable -- or unwilling -- to see what was right before him, pressed like a viper to his breast. Edward felt at first only the shifting of a lanky familiar body sprawled over his own, but then he felt the first stirrings of Al’s breath on his lips, Al’s arms tighteningly wound around his neck. It didn’t hurt, but it felt strange, yet Edward kept his eyes closed, for the first time afraid to look at the painful beauty of his brother. When Al’s lips finally touched his, a breath shuddered in his chest, and Edward realised he’d been expecting this, knowing somehow that it was inevitable, and that Al would be the instigator.

He let their lips fall together and slowly the clasp of Al’s mouth over his own felt like it was the most natural thing in the world, the taste of his brother’s tongue in his mouth like the taste of the sweetest nectar. If Edward had ever believed in some sort of god, he would have believed that this was a gift from heaven. Even Edward, in his infinite supply of guilt, felt none for this. If it was a taboo breaking like a spider’s web apart around them, he couldn’t feel it. Kissing Al felt as easy as breathing, like the culmination of years of work and sweat and blood and the most deserved reward. Al’s lips were slick and smooth, warm and caressing, passing slowly over the seam of Edward’s mouth, and then settling there. He sucked Edward’s lower lip into his mouth, and Edward felt his body tighten in reply to the gentle question Al asked with his lips.

They wound up, unsurprisingly, in bed, with few clothes and fewer inhibitions between them. Al proved, to Edward’s anxious curiosity, to be just as talented using his lips and tongue other places; and Edward proved to be just as unable to refuse his brother this as anything else. Their sticky kisses left trails of various fluids in sentences across each other’s bodies, and Al’s hair, long and loose and smelling of fresh rain, dragged through each long phrase of kisses, and strands stuck here and there, and Edward breathed through his mouth in a loud paroxysm of noise, his abdomen arching, his eyes closed and Al’s hands gripping each hip like he meant it. Edward’s own hair was a tangled mess of gold on the pillow, patterned in sweat and cool against the sharp heat of his cheeks. The sweat that salted his own skin felt like Al’s kisses, powerful and undeniable.

Al played Edward’s body like an instrument finally in tune, and his older brother could only gasp and arch as his climax swept over him. And Al, that beautiful, mysterious other, wrung every last sound and sensation he could out of Edward, till Edward was breathing too fast and his body was still shaking with the aftermath. There were more sticky, sweaty kisses, and the taste of Al’s mouth was now the taste of himself, but it didn’t really matter, because from the first taste of Al Edward had recognised only himself in his brother’s mouth. Surely there was some sort of precedent for having sex with your brother, and just as certainly, there must have been some sort of precedent for why one _shouldn’t_ have sex with their siblings, but to Edward it didn’t matter. Al’s blood ran through his own veins, same blood, same history, same _future_. They’d been together so long that he felt as though they’d long ago fused into one person, and the sex was just another stepping stone in the long journey of their life, the long history of breaking every taboo and committing every sin, and Al tasted so good, and felt so divine, and looked so ethereal in the dimness that Edward didn’t care about anything but touching that precious skin and feeling that even more precious heart as it beat fast with the final consummation of their love.

They finally fell together in a sticky, damp mass of exhausted limbs, and Edward pressed swollen sensitised lips to Al’s temple. “I love you, Al,” he said with only a slight wheeze, and Al smiled against his neck, his lips curving and erotic against his skin.

“I love you, too, brother.”

***

It must have been long past midnight when Edward woke gasping for air, and unable to find any. He felt at first like he was facing the Gate, the heaviness on his chest like the guilt that had weighed him down when at its mercy. Every inhale brought only the scent of sex and cotton, but no precious oxygen, and his arms flailed of their own accord, desperately trying to swim up out of the dream that was smothering him.

His automail hand connected with soft, giving flesh, and for a moment the pressure eased and Edward sucked in a tiny amount of fresh air, before his arms were suddenly pinned, and his hips bucked but they could gain no purchase, and then the pillow slipped and the brightness of familiar hair and eyes filled his vision, and his gaze widened in absolute disbelief and horror. It was his own beautiful _brother_ with the pillow pressed over his mouth and nose, and perhaps Al could read the question in his frantic eyes, because he began to speak even as he kept his brother pinned like only _he_ had ever been able to do.

“I’m sorry, brother,” he said, and his voice was like an ache in Edward’s heart. “I couldn’t ever bear to give you up,” he explained, and readjusted the pillow. Edward’s vision grew hazy and blackened a little more. There was an unquenchable ringing in his ears. “I knew that someday someone would find out,” he continued, even as Edward’s hearing grew distant.

“I knew that someday you would leave me, brother. I knew I could never survive it. Don’t worry, brother, it’s painless really. Just a few more seconds and you won’t feel anything anymore, or ever again. Don’t worry, Edward, love. We’ll be together always.”

Edward felt his consciousness evade his grasp at last, but in the inky darkness of unawareness that followed, he never truly knew if he and Al were reunited.

end.


	2. Epilogue to “Now Comes the Night”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _...and it was, as he promised his brother, quite painless, really._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Al’s point of view; takes place after the main body of the fic. The idea behind this fic was that Al was a little not right in the head after his transmutation, and he cooked up the idea of a suicide pact, only without Edward’s knowledge or agreement. Hence the following...
> 
> Warnings for suicide!

Al slowly let go of the pillow, pushing it off of Edward’s flushed, lifeless face, a single tear clinging to his cheek. He gathered his beautiful older brother up in his arms, rocking back and forth heartbrokenly, well-aware that while he had only done what he ought, it was more painful than he’d expected it would be.

Edward’s automail arm was pressed against his ribcage, the most dead part of his brother in life now feeling like his most living part, as the gears slowly lost the movement granted to them by his nerves. Al pressed a wet kiss to Edward’s forehead, eyes closing, rocking, rocking...

Al woke, aching all over from sleeping in such an awkward position. The bed felt cold to him now, and outside, the first blush of dawn was creeping through the blinds. Gently he lowered his older brother back down to the bed, stood up and stretched, yawned. He lifted Edward reverently, carrying him into the bathroom. He ran the bathwater, staring sightlessly into the filling tub, seeing only an endless reel of images of his brother: their childhood, their journey, their love consummated.

When the tub was full, Al manuevered himself and his brother awkwardly into the bathtub, uncaring about the water that sluiced over the side. He took a deep breath and let it out, then another deep breath.

He exhaled sharply and positioned Edward so that his gorgeous naked body was sprawled over his own, then lifted Ed’s razor from the side of the tub.

It was a lot easier than he expected, really. Smothering Edward had been the hardest part -- he hadn’t expected him to _struggle_. Edward’s weight was a welcome compression on his chest, making it far more difficult for him to breathe. There was only a split second of pain, really, for each wrist, and then he was sliding his head under the water, his long hair straggling across his face, the brightness of the bathroom fading as he closed his eyes.

He could feel the warmth of the water increasing, taste the cloying sweetness as it trickled into his mouth, but he dragged Edward’s automail arm over his mouth and nose, and it was, as he promised his brother, quite painless, really. One moment he could feel his lungs burning for oxygen, and the next moment, he felt nothing at all.

end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _When the hour is upon us_  
>  And our beauty surely gone  
> No you will not be forgotten  
> No you will not be alone
> 
>  
> 
> _And when the day has all but ended_  
>  And our echo starts to fade  
> No you will not be alone then  
> And you will not be afraid
> 
>  
> 
> -Now Comes the Night (Rob Thomas)

**Author's Note:**

> _Now comes the night_  
>  Feel it fading away  
> And the soul underneath  
> Is it all that remains  
> So just slide over here  
> Leave your fear in the fray  
> Let us hold to each other  
> Until the end of our days 
> 
> -Now Comes the Night (Rob Thomas)


End file.
